Building a music server - tutorials...?

What specifically made you switch to AIFF?

there is a ton of useful information at computeraudiophile.com if you are interested, including some free guides and manuals and lots of members who will help.  I have found the forums to be very good.

I have gone the macmini route into a superuniti and happy to discuss if you are interested, I just posted a longer post on this setup in another thread.  I'm sure this will generate more comments from the good folks here.

Have a look at this thread: https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...ac-on-the-fly-to-wav  

Thank you, interesting.  I may have a play over the weekend and see if I can hear a difference

When I first started using my unitiQute it would only play WAV and FLAC files so I went with FLAC as I wanted the metadata and artwork to display properly. My bedroom and office systems both rely on using an iMac or MacBook Air into a USB DAC, so this is where I had to have my music in ALAC format for iTunes compatibility.

However with one of the more recent firmware updates for the unitiQute I found that it can play AIFF files as well. this means I can now have just one set of music files in AIFF and I can play them on any of my systems.

The other reason is that, although I have not really heard a difference, there are some that say AIFF and WAV do sound better then FLAC or ALAC. Whether that's true or not, I thought I might as well start ripping my CDs in an uncompressed format from now on.

See, I was already decided on FLAC, then read your story and now I'm leaning towards AIFF... So instead of ripping my first CD tonight I've been scratching my head and googling the "FLAC vs. WAV/AIFF" debate, only to find out that there's as many opinions as google hits for this topic...

Ah, these are pioneer days. 100 years from now buying a NAS server will be as easy as buying a refrigerator. You don't have to join user groups and discuss on internet fora which coolant to use. You just buy it, plug in, and it works

Certainly I started with ALAC with iTunes, but soon realised it is worth using AIFF.

As hard disk storage not being such an expense these days, I don't see why anyone who can hear the difference would go with what they consider slightly less good. The difference is not huge, but certainly worthwhile in favour of AIFF files in my view.

ATB from George

I'll second that! 

if you are going for a synology NAS, i would recommend to check the higher grade ds713 as alternative to ds214. i made the move and use it for 2x2tb in raid - much faster due to dualcore, much less noise, better software, great kit. also choice of HDD is important as NAS operation 24/7 is not what std hdd are built for. Check out eg western red series (i use) or seagate nas series. i also have a 2tb usb for backup kept in remote location. just went through this buying over xmas as unitiserve 2tb crashed - use synology upnp and us ssd as server.

lars

Hi Lars,

I've been using the DS 212j, and now the 213j.  I had not considered one of the larger nas'es, as I only need 2 hdd's.  But this is interesting; if it's substantially quieter or otherwise more desirable, another hundred dollars or so would make it of interest to me.

Hi Bart,

The DS713 is also 'just' for 2 Hdds, but I really really am pleased with it. In the context of the overall system costs, I really find the small extra investment worthwhile compared to keeping the ds211. It is also expandable with another hdd bay so futureproof. Performance and noise is clearly better as i noted.

there are some good reviews available on the net, you could check out. They also compare vs ds200 series.

cheers

Lars

I, too, would rather spend a bit more money on a quality NAS and have peace of mind afterwards. I've been reading reviews, but few reviewers bother to measure the noise levels, and noise is an important consideration for me. There are some fanless NAS units out there, but all of them are pretty slow. My friend bought a Western Digital Duo NAS, fanless, but when it streams its CPU is so busy it can't handle other requests. And I do envision a situation when we add a TV for the bedroom one day and would like to stream video content there, while two other rooms are listening to different music streams...

Wat, there should be nothing stopping you using the Pi with Asset now. It works a dream with Naim on full duplex wired Ethernet links  supporting transcoding from a myriad of formats (apart from ALAC) and is highly configurable and ultra cheap.. All in all <£50 and next to nothing to run.

Of course the other advantage of the Pi, is that it decouples audio streaming from your NAS (s) which is a sensible thing in my opinion In terms of performance, and in my experience sound quality. (TCP windowing effects on the Naim streamer board)

Simon

Makes perfect sense and if I was 20 years younger and didn't juggle 3 professions, which hardly leaves time for sleep, I would definitely go for it But reading this thread: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/sh...PnP-for-Raspberry-pi and seeing the amount of troubleshooting needed to get it to work I'm afraid it would end up on my shelf as another unfinished project due to the lack of time...

Of course this may change once they finally release the no-sleep-required pill. I hear the American scientists are working on it. There are SO many projects I'd love to embark on once I get hold of that pill!

ok, but there are no difficulties with the current beta. It just works. But yes it will take a couple hours of your time following the basic instructions. But it is a choice.

its certainly a lot easier in my experience than trying to get Twonky to work properly with Naim on a ReadyNAS.

i guess if you want trouble / instruction free route the Unitiserve is probably best.

Simon. 

Double checking that asset on raspberri pi does not transcode alac?  The pc version does.

I guess I'm in a market for a solution half way between a Pi and Unitiserve both in terms of convenience and price. I can afford to spend up to 25% of Unitiserve price tag (in this country), which can buy me a highish-end NAS like Synology DS713+ with two 4TB disks. I and hope that with such solution I won't have to struggle with any Twonkies (whatever they are), just set up the NAS via its web console, then hopefully my ND5SX will just see it and let me browse the music on its disk...

Gajdzin

ND5SX needs to be fed music by a UPnP server.

Twonky is one such UPnP Server, and it comes by default on many out-of-the-box NASes, but it compatibility is terrible and regularly Naim streamer users report issues when using Twonky.

that is why there is so much discussion here on alternatives for Twonky.

What most do is use another computer (PC, Raspberry Pi) to run Asset UPnP Server, which has good compatibility with Naim, and have that computer with Asset communicate with the NAS as a plain fileserver which works just fine. It does require an additional computer however to run the Asset.

Cheers

Aleg

If you choose to go with a Synology NAS you will not have to deal with any Twonky software.

synology has a media server built in that works very well with naim. You can of course install others if you prefer.

I think that for your mix of budget and technical interests, a "good" nas (Synology qualifies), or a Vortexbox, would be good choices.  Folks seem to have good results with Vortexbox, and you can buy a small fanless Vortexbox "appliance" that will do all you need.  Google up "Vortexbox" and check out the hardware (not just the software, which itself can be installed on any PC).

I've never owned or used Vortexbox, but its popular here.